The towering bulk that had been Jeshka unleashed a gravelly screech like ungreased gears grinding dry. A knotted arm of mouldering thread smashed downward, splintering flagstones where Sivani had stood a breath earlier. Chunks of granite skittered across the flags as soot belched from the ruined ribcage. Sivani slid two paces sideways over the grit, her pupils fixed on the swollen knot of purplish thread behind the sternum. She raised the polished spindle she had wrested from Rochus, its dark grain catching the lantern glare, and murmured the warp-count for a burial shroud.
Perched upon a fractured arch, Rochus coughed blood against his lace collar and wound the crank of a brass repeater-crossbow. Cold iron bolts took flight with sharp clicks, thudding into the creature's knotted shoulders. At every strike, hanks of dry rot tore loose and drifted like ash. "Keep clear of the pivot, street-rat!" Rochus shouted, his sneer thin with pain.
Below, Nadjia kicked a trench through the pulverized tile, pouring lines of rock salt and smouldering rue. A pale amber radiance sparked along the salt-line, turning the drifting mold into grease. One hand stayed pressed to the heavy Inquisitor seal hidden inside her coat. "Hold it inside the circle, Sivani!" she called.
Sivani ignored them both, her attention solely on Jeshka. The colossal husk flailed, its dry shrieks shaking soot from the rafters, but Sivani regarded it solely as an untamed loom. She saw raw tensile strength: years of stolen fortune and borrowed grief curdled into workable thread. She set the spindle whirling between her palms. Her left hand drifted forward, fingertips hooked, tracing the invisible draft of the warp.
Methodically, Sivani began teasing apart the tangled bulk. Her focus found the exact seams where the rotting cord bound Jeshka's accumulated debts to the flesh. The swollen mass groaned as pale, milk-colored strands pulled free from the bulk, drawn toward the spindle's groove. They looped through the air in taut diagonals, laying down the initial selvage of her masterpiece.
*”HOSTILE INTERFERENCE DETECTED. PREPARING COUNTERMEASURE.”*
The blood-red text blazed not in the air, but directly in Sivani’s mind, a sudden, searing pressure behind her eyes. Then came the visions. Not faint whispers, but a full-sensory assault. She saw Mistress Kaelana, her face contorted in agony, begging Sivani for solace, for a final, loving touch, not just a cold harvest. She saw the crushed, weeping face of her childhood self, abandoned and alone in the freezing alleyways of Osvengard. She saw Rochus, his handsome features twisted in a rictus of betrayal, whispering her darkest secrets to the Guild Elders. She saw Nadjia laughing as she dropped iron manacles into the dust. The apparition screamed with phantom grief, attempting to drown her in a synthetic swamp of remorse.
The towering horror shrieked in false triumph, swinging two ponderous fists toward her head. Rochus loosed another volley from the archway, his iron bolts punching through rotten sinew without slowing the descent. Nadjia's salt-circle spat yellow sparks under the foul draft.
Sivani faltered for a fraction of a second, her hands tensing. The visions were vivid, suffocating. But then, a subtle shift. Her brow furrowed, not in anguish, but in a peculiar, almost clinical assessment. *Interesting,* she thought, her internal voice calm and detached amidst the psychic storm. *The resonance is quite strong. A complex blend of guilt, isolation, and perceived abandonment. The structure of the emotional projection is… crude, yet effective in its raw intensity.* She observed the phantom pangs of regret, the manufactured sting of loneliness, as if they were nothing more than data points, components of a particularly volatile textile. It was an abstract problem, a highly potent pigment, not a personal failing. The pressure behind her eyes was a nuisance, a dull ache that momentarily blurred the edges of her focus, but it was merely an obstruction to her work, not a soul-shattering revelation.
*”ERROR. TARGET EMOTIONAL RESPONSE NEGLIGIBLE. RECALIBRATING… RECALIBRATING… FAILED.”*
The blood-red text flickered, then vanished. The visions folded and snapped like scorched parchment. The pressure cleared, leaving a dull ache behind her temples. Sivani blinked away the red after-images, her ledger already adjusted. The assault had verified the tensile strength of the sorrow; she knew exactly how much tension the yarn could bear.
Sivani darted across the broken pavers. A rotten limb crashed down to her right, spraying splinters, but she was already under the ribs. With calloused, dye-stained fingers, she drove both hands into the hollow cavity of Jeshka's chest. She parted the foul cords with steady, surgical thrusts, searching for the central knot.
Her fingers locked around a slick, burning cable buried deep within the center. It writhed like an eel, burning hot and panic-stricken against her palms. Sivani braced her boots against the shattered ribcage, set her shoulders, and hauled back with all her weight.
*Snap.* The sound was deafening, like a thousand brittle bones shattering at once. A blinding flash of blood-red light erupted from Jeshka’s chest, followed by a guttural, gurgling scream that quickly lost its potency, devolving into a wet, collapsing sigh. In Sivani’s hands, a physical, squirming length of blood-red, parasitic *something* pulsed weakly, a severed umbilical cord of malevolence. The colossal shell shuddered. Its bulk slackened as the gray strands unraveled into harmless drifts of dry lint. The supernatural corruption that had menaced the lower districts went slack and dead.
But the immediate victory came at a terrible cost. The sudden vacuum of energy, the violent severance of the parasite that had animated and warped the ancient structure, sent shockwaves through the very foundations of the Cathedral. A deep rumble rolled through the upper masonry. Long fractures split the ribbing of the vaulted nave, shedding mortar and stone tiles. Rochus shouted from the arch; Nadjia lunged forward with hands outstretched. Above them, three tons of ancient cathedral roof gave way, crashing down through the gloom to bury Sivani and her half-woven shroud.